Ingram Micro's Aptec has announced the launch of the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace, an automated cloud services platform that is now available in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates.

The Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace is an ecosystem that brings together buyers and sellers to conduct business on a single platform. Rather than building out a comprehensive and multi-layered infrastructure, resellers can leverage the pre-built, flexible platform from Ingram Micro to purchase, provision, manage and invoice technology solutions for their end-user customers.

"In order to provide a fully automated cloud platform that enables resellers to offer a wide range of solutions to their customers, there can be significant barriers to entry due to high capital costs needed to develop, manage and support an underlying infrastructure," said Dr. Ali Baghdadi, senior vice president and chief executive, Ingram Micro META. "To help remove these barriers, Ingram Micro Cloud has made substantial investments in the channel to develop an automated cloud services platform and provide resellers with greater capability to effectively sell cloud solutions."

With the launch, Aptec has added to the Cloud Marketplace Microsoft Office 365 through the Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) programme and a suite of migration services from SkyKick which allows service providers to move their customers' mail and related data to Office 365 in an easy way for increased sales velocity and reduced project risk. A number of additional cloud offerings including Dropbox for Business and BitTitan are expected to be added soon.

Bhavsar added that: "Rather than designing, managing, and maintaining a costly technology infrastructure, the Ingram Micro Cloud Marketplace enables solution providers to free up valuable resources so they can concentrate more on marketing, business development and customer satisfaction."

Ingram Micro currently operates 20 Cloud Marketplaces worldwide throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia and now the Middle East.